McHenry County Blog

This was an expensive (I would say, outreach) event for the Gay Games.

The Village of Lakewood billed them $3,400, as I reported the Tuesday before last.

Now, Crystal Lake Police Chief David Lindner says that Crystal Lake’s bill is $18,486.93.

Here are the departmental totals:

· Police - $14,200.93
· Fire & Rescue - $3,975.39
· Public Works - $310.61

Chief Lindner said that upwards of 30 officers were used to police the event.

And, in an interesting twist, Crystal Lake is working through the City of Chicago to get paid.

The Chief expects “having no problems getting the bills paid.”

And, the approximately 75 rowers paid $75 apiece. $5,625, if 75 participated.

The park district collected $2,750. It got paid in advance.

Kirk Reimer told how the park district got its money:

We called them because we had not received our money when they said we would. The agreement that we had with them was that they would pay us by June 30th.

I think it was 3 or 4 days later that Jack called them. I told him to tell them that if they did not get the money to us, the event would not take place. It got here the next day.

I suppose the difference between the participant fees of about $5,600 and the total bill of almost $25,000 will be made up by the corporate sponsors of the Gay Games.